


Call Off Your Ghosts

by akire_yta



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Brotp, Gen, Pre-Series, Roadtrip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 10:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 17,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8574202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: Growing up is hard.  Road trips are easy





	1. Chapter One: And if we’re careful, we can do this all our lives.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter and work titles drawn from Dessa's amazing song "Call Off Your Ghosts" -- go watch and enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zT5Q8U_O8Y

Penny was singing along to the music.

John had his hands on the wheel at ten and two, correct technique drilled into him from a young age. But his eyes kept stealing sideways to sneak looks at Penny, her face tilted up to bask in the sun, her pink scarf fluttering in the breeze.

He’d never seen her so relaxed, her fingers lax on the windowsill, her eyes closed. Her voice was quiet, almost lost under the hum of the motor and the counterpoint drone of the miles rolling under the tires. 

“Eyes on the road, Tracy.” 

John laughed, even as he shifted his gaze forward. “Ma’am, yes ma’am.” 

He didn’t have to look, could hear the smile in her voice. “Pull over in the next town, we’ll swap drivers.” 

John couldn’t remember the last sign he’d seen. “Where is the next town?” 

Penny’s immaculate hand appeared in his peripheral vision. “Somewhere that way.” She pointed towards the horizon. 

John laughed, shifting in the driver’s seat so the wheel was mostly held steady by his knees. “Great navigation there, Pen.” 

Next to him, Penny turned away from the window. “Great Britain is an island, it’s not like we can fall off or anything.” 

They drove, the purr of the motor and hum of the tires a quiet counterpoint to the song Penny was playing on the stereo. 

* * * 

John’s plans had been to sleep for a week, and then maybe catch a flight back to New York or wherever his family was these days. His head still felt fuzzy, the intensity of the final few weeks of his thesis combining with the adrenaline rush of defense to leave him feeling drained and strangely discombobulated. 

Penny had appeared, unannounced, at 10am on the second day of his life post-thesis. “Good morning, Dr Tracy,” she had beamed. But she was handing over a takeout coffee cup so big her fingers could barely wrap around it, so John had let her in. 

She waited until he had drained half the cup in one scaldingly hot swallow before pouncing. “You’re not doing anything for the next ten days or so, are you darling?” 

John coughed a little, feeling the burn all the way down his esophagus. “You’ve got your scheming face on, Pen.” 

Penny just beamed brighter. 

* * *

The car was a classic, British racing green, every line polished until it gleamed. “Father lost it at cards, silly man always pushes the bluff too far.” Penny was remarkably blasé about the loss. “He’s asked me to drive it up to Scotland and deliver it personally, with a few choice words I won’t tarnish your delicate ears by repeating.” 

John snorted, remembering Penny’s surprised blush the first time she’d heard John let loose in seven languages when the antique scanner in the postgrad lab had failed him. She’d stopped playing the Lady after that “Sure, Penny,” he told her, dragging out the syllables. 

Penny had never let anything as simple as the truth stop her before, and she wasn’t starting now. “Anyway, I thought you could come, keep me company.” 

John frowned, walking around the sports car. It was tiny, and sleek, and John had to appreciate the aerodynamics. “It’s, what, five hours by road? If that?” He paused on the far side, planting his hands on the frame supporting the closed fabric roof. “Why did you say ten days?” 

Penny shrugged, playing the ingénue. “I thought we could go via Cardiff.” 

John burst out laughing. “Cambridge to Glasgow via Cardiff.” He looked over the car again; he could almost imagine how it might handle a corner. He thought of New York, streets already baking with early summer heat and the press of too many people. 

Penny was watching him closely, an edge lurking behind the bright, easy smile. 

“Fine, but you’re driving the city parts. I hate urban driving.” 

Penny flew around to tackle him with a hug that had him rocking backwards on his feet. 


	2. Chapter Two: And I knew you’d be there too.

Penny first met John on a Thursday. It was raining, the light drizzly mist that penetrated everything at that time of year. She was home for the first time since starting at the school her father had chosen, the one that no-one talked about but that everyone seemed to know.

No-one asked her how her first term went. Everyone in their circle knew the curriculum already. Most of her father’s associates were graduates, after all.

Except for this man, with his son standing dutifully, head bowed, three paces behind. The mist clung to his hair, making it shine like polished copper.

The two men, captains and leaders, retreated behind closed doors to make decisions on the fate of nations. Penny smiled, practicing her mask, knowing her unspoken duty was to act as hostess, to maintain the facade. But there was something about the boy before her that seemed closed off, uninterested in any performance Penny may care to muster.

The silence drew out between them.

“Thursday’s child has far to go,” she recited, sing-song to herself, the lullaby rising out dim memories of the nursery.

John had looked up at that, and Penny was struck by the sudden intensity of being the focus of his attention. “I take it you’re a…” he thought a moment, not at all put off by her impolite non sequitur, already grasping the reference. “Saturday’s child?”

She accepted the compliment with a graceful bow.

After that, it had been easy.

* * *

They skirt around London by silent agreement, Penny taking the wheel to send them flying off the old country road they had been following almost since Cambridge. It was strange already to be back on the M11, merging with the mess of traffic, automatic trucks and luxury touring coaches that flowed together onto the M25.

John tilted his tablet, trying to map the clearest path despite the glare on his screen. “Oh, put that away darling,” she sighed, batting at him blindly with one hand.

John fixed her with a beady stare as he caught her by the wrist and guided her fingers back onto the steering wheel. “We need to know the right exit, Pen. Unless you want to do another loop around Greater London?”

Penny peered over the top of her sunglasses, scanning the cluttered horizon. The sun was out, and she almost wished she’d thought to put the top down when they’d stopped to change positions. “We just need to pick one going south-west.” She sat back, nodding towards the curve in the road ahead. “That way.”

John sighed, but he pocketed his tablet. “You’re going to take us around Britain navigating by sun and stars? Really?”

She laughed and sent the little sports car darting through an impossible gap in the traffic. John didn’t even flinch. “If it was good enough for our ancestors, and all that. You trust me.” It wasn’t a question; it was a constant of her universe.

John laughed, sudden and easy. “Yeah. Damn fool me, I do. Okay, Miss Penny. South-west ho!” His hand cut an easy salute in the air, pointing their way. Penny grinned as she pressed down on the accelerator, sending the car surging forward.

* * *

Penny excelled. It was what was expected, so it is what she did. Her family name was somewhere on every award and every prize locked away in the glass cabinets that lined the hallways of her college like hazards.

They expected her to learn languages, so she became fluent in several. They demanded physical excellence, and demure female charm, and razor wits and critical insight and always something more.

Penny ran laps until she stopped huffing like bear, then studied until the lines of words blurred together. She completed every task that was asked of her, perfectly and without complaint. She learned how to serve high tea, and how to strip a nine millimeter in under a minute and a thousand other skills she would need in her adult life.

But for now, she looked like just another graduate student, hurrying for shelter from the rain in the winter, enjoying the sunshine in the all-too-short summers. It was part of the social contract of her world that she always looked like someone else.

John never asked about her classes, though she knew he knew, at least to some degree, what she was training to be. After all, his father and hers had an Understanding, more binding than any contract, and the both of them were being primed to play their parts.

Penny enjoyed the challenges of her college, though, just once, she would have liked to have felt safe enough to fail. “Do you ever just want to run away from it all?” she asked John once, walking with him arm in arm along the banks of the Cam in one of their rare moments of respite.

“Penny,” he had replied, pulling her in close. “Where would we go?”

* * *

“I’m hungry,” John announces, apropos of nothing. “Did we pack any food?”

Penny’s feeling relaxed, warm under glass as the scenery flashed by – the little car is slung low to the ground, making everything seem faster, bigger, wilder. “No. I thought we’d forage, live of the land, rough it like our forebears.”

John shifted in his seat again, long legs tangled under the small glove compartment. “So, break out the family credit at the next cafe?”

Penny eased them into the filter lane for the next exit. “Isn’t global finance grand?” The motor purred as it wound down to cruising speed, and Penny shifted forward to crane her neck, reading the sign. “Slough. Well, this is rather…grey, isn’t it?”

“So just like any town in England then?” John held up his palms in surrender as Penny glared at him. “Sorry, sorry…oh, over there, there’s a spot.”

The air had gotten chilly, and Penny reached back for her scarf as John came around and opened her door. “Thank you, darling,” she said, slipping a pleasant smile onto her face for the old couple watching them as they passed by.

It was warmer in the old cafe, and Penny found them a seat by the window. The red checked pattern of the table cloth was faded, but it reminded Penny of something, some moment in time from long ago. She shook her head to clear the ghost, turning to look out over the street outside.

“We’ve only done a hundred kilometers or so,” John announced as he slipped into the seat opposite. “Sure ten days is going to be enough?”

Penny watched him in the reflection off the windowpane, his face coming in and out of contrast as people passed by outside. “Daddy said that once I deliver the car, he has a job for me.” She turned and smiled at him, the same pleasant smile she had perfected long ago. “He didn’t specify an exact date.”

There’s a single flower in a slim vase on the table between them, and Penny reached out instinctively, feeling the softness of the petal under the pads of her fingerprints.

“Uh huh,” John murmured, already making the connections. “I repeat my question. Is ten days going to be long enough?”

There’s a new inflection in his voice. Everyone always said that John was hard to read, but she’d always found him easy to hear. She let her hand drop, her fingers covering his where his hand rested of the faded red and white fabric. “It will have to do.”

 


	3. Chapter Three: Look at us, all grown up, collared shirts and high heel shoes

They stumbled across the little bed and breakfast almost by accident, the warm glow of the lamp over the door a beacon as night closed in. The gravel driveway crunched under the tires as John let them roll to a stop. “Want me to see if they have room in the stable?” Penny offered before John could even open his mouth.

Their hosts were surprised, but gracious, signing them into the register in a front parlor full of floral prints and roses freshly cut from the garden outside the open window. Penny smiled and chatted and kept all attention on her as they were shown to their room. John walked ahead, ducking inside gratefully as Penny nodded attentively through until the end of the long list of things they should do while in the area.

“Pen?” John called out as Penny finally bid their hosts good evening.

Penny stopped just inside the door to their room. “Oh. I can…”

John cut her off with a wave of his hand. “You heard them, last room.” He stepped over their dropped bags and sat on the edge of the large bed. “Nice mattress, at least” he said with a shrug.

Penny raised one eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

John rolled his eyes. “It’ll be fine, Pen. We’ve shared tents, and you’ve fallen asleep on me, like, every other movie night.” He sighed and held out his hand when Penny hesitated. “Come on, pinky swear, no ravaging like this is a bad romance novel.”

Penny shook her head with a smile as she hooked her pinky around his, sealing the agreement. She whooped with surprise as John tightened his grip and hauled her over to fall gracelessly onto the room’s only bed.

* * *

It’s not soon after their first meeting that Penny begins to develop her theory of how John is surrounded by invisible concentric circles of force and effect. It takes her time to map them all, in the erratic moments after that first introduction, where their paths intersect.

The problem is, she can’t feel them or see them herself, so she has to rely on observational data. But she’s learning to watch, to see secrets and lies, to observe and witness, and watching people around John is an education in its own right.

Observational conditions are best in the larger parties, where everyone is already a little uncomfortable. It’s akin to filling a box with smoke to see the single shaft of light. Around strangers, when the social script runs out and he has to be witty and charming and not insulting, that’s when all the circles are most easily detected.

She’s heard stories in her classes, of great experiments to observe undetectable forces. She wonders if those scientists ever felt like this on the verge of discovery. But tonight, Penny finally feels she has answers, a model to test.

Some people never make it past the first ring; for the most part, John is self-aware enough of his place in society not to be that prickly, but there are some who trigger every defense he has. Mostly young men of his own age and status, though as Penny had passed through her own debut and onto the next social stage, she began to notice more and more of her own peers approaching John with fluttering eyelashes and swaying hips, only to be turned away at the metaphorical gates.

The next ring in is patrolled by etiquette, norms and convention. John can be downright charming when he chooses to be, but only when he feels in control. Ask him to comment on the weather, commiserate over some recent tragedy, clarify some technical point from the latest TI media statement, and John Tracy could even pass as endearing. But the second the questions got too personal, the moment that he felt his sense of control was starting to slip, up came the walls and John was as unreachable as if he were on the dark side of the moon.

The only anomalies were those who got through the outer ring only to rouse his ire. By now, Penny has met all the Tracy boys, has seen them as storms and tsunamis and hurricanes, all forces of nature in their own rights. John is a volcano, the calm on the surface hiding a boiling magma beneath, and Penny sometimes feels like she’s the only one who understands what the steam clouds mean.

He’s almost hissing with pressure now, and Penny extricates herself smoothly from the conversation with the Mayor and a sitting Lord that she had not heard a word of. Even across the room, John is obvious to her, arms crossed, eyes bright.

She sailed through the circles and right into the inner ring without challenge. “Darling, there you are. Domestic emergency, requiring your aid.”

It’s a codephrase they’ve used before. John let her lock onto his arm and hustle him past the coat check and through a lockable door before he next spoke. “He was wrong.” When someone has broached the barriers, John’s frustrations had him starting sentences mid-thought.

“He’s also the son of your father’s rival,” Penny replied calmly. She knew his mind, could follow his logic. “People talk, darling, when the heir of one empire hauls off and punches another.”

“Well, people are stupid.” Whatever Nathan had said had gotten John properly riled up. She laid her hands on his chest, gently smoothing down the lapels of his suit. It’s new, probably because the damn fool wouldn’t stop growing. Final year of high school, off to college next year, and he’s already taller than her. She has to go on tiptoes to peck a kiss to the tip of his nose.

“People are stupid,” she repeated. “Hence it is up to us to maintain standards.” Her tone is a carefully judged echo of her Aunt Sylvia’s, and it worked, startling a laugh out of him. She felt the sound through the ribs beneath her fingers, and she gave into the instinct to lean in, past the boundaries of the final circle that has emerged as John too had shifted from child to young adult. This circle catches his father, his older brothers, but not Alan, and not her.

She’s not aware of anyone else who can get so close. She tries not to think too closely about that. He lets her in, wrapped his arm around her shoulders as she pressed her cheek to his chest.

Every time they meet, she hopes that John hasn’t built another circle.

* * *

“So that’s where that went.”

Penny glanced up at the now open bathroom door as she finished twisting her hair up into a loose sleeping knot. “Where what went?”

John nodded at her chest. Penny looked down at the faded NASA logo, looked up again, and smiled sweetly, feeling the edges of her eyes crinkle.

“Fluttering your lashes won’t work on me, Pen, remember. I’m immune.” But John was smiling back, sleeping pants slung low on his hip as he passed by her to turn back the covers.

“It’s your secret superpower,” she agreed. The back-and-forth was easy, the patterns now well-worn and familiar. She crossed the room, adjusting the window so that it was only just open enough to let in warm summer evening air laced with the scent of roses.

John was finished adjusting the sheets to his liking. Penny grabbed a discarded pillow and tossed it onto the middle of the bed. “Is that for you or me?” John asked, one eyebrow raised.

Penny shrugged, fingers squeezing fistfuls of feathers against her palms before she squashed it flat onto the mattress, a nervous tic she still had yet to eliminate.

“Want me to take the floor?”

Penny shook her head, sharply enough that a few wisps of hair fell around her face. “No, it’s fine, it’s not that.”

John sat on the edge of the bed, swinging his legs up and around. He patted the mattress beside her, and Penny slowly climbed up, pulling the pillow onto her lap. “Is this a repeat of the first time you fell asleep at my flat?” he asked.

Penny rolled her eyes, hating the warmth in her cheeks. “I will never hear the end of that, will I? It was your fault, you startled me.”

John tugged the pillow out of her grasp, leaning forward to stuff it down behind his back. “I had a black eye for two weeks. My adviser got me pamphlets, Penny. Actual pamphlets from the counselling service.”

Penny’s head whipped around. “You never told me that.”

John was surprisingly fussy about his sleeping arrangement, but Penny was used now to seeing him twist and turn and plump and stuff pillows until he was comfortable, though usually it was on his couch as they settled in for their Friday night ritual. “You didn’t talk to me for three weeks, Pen. So how could I have told you?”

Penny conceded the point. She rubbed her neck, feeling overheated. “I punched you in my sleep, John. That’s a little more than a faux pas.”

John has somehow twisted so he’s on his side, head resting on his bicep. “Technically, it was an elbow. And that’s what I get,” he grinned wickedly. “For luring an almost-secret agent into napping on my couch.”

Penny slid down so that she was face to face with him. “Technically,” she corrected him, matching his tone. “It was probably trying to wake me up that did it.”

John looked young, relaxed in a faded heather-grey t-shirt, his hair mussed and still slightly damp from his shower. “Didn’t happen again. Won’t happen again.” He sounds blaise, but Penny can still remember his sound of pain as her strike had connected.

Penny rolled onto her back, flinging her arm over her face. Her skin felt hot and prickly where her arm was pressed into her face. “You talk too much, John Tracy.”

“Night Pen.” There’s a click, and the room went dark.

“Good night, John.”

* * *

When John saw Cambridge, UK, on the list of possibilities, he reached for his comm without reading further.

Penny, like him, kept odd hours; despite what were sometimes oceans between them, they always seemed to be strangely in sync. Her reply flashed up only moments after he sent off his query. _Join me_.

John never did bother to find out what other schools he could have attended. No other school had a Penny.

He tried to apologize to her, once, a few years after they first met, a few years before Cambridge. He wasn’t stupid; he heard the whispers, her name and his. He knew what everyone thought, and he worried that it might go badly for her when everyone realized they were wrong about him and her.

John’s still not fully sure of himself; there’s too much cultural noise for him to get a clear signal on what he all means. But he knows what he’s not.

It’s a relief when he lands at Stansted by himself and sees her waiting to greet him. Penny never asked for more of him than he was willing to give, always welcomed what he can offer.

She just seemed to _get_ him, and John wondered if this is what they meant by being in love.

Over long grey winters and short warm summers, he slowly learned from her that there were more ways to love someone than what everyone else expected.

* * *

Penny woke slowly, vaguely registering the start of the dawn chorus, feeling sweaty and overheated and with a pressing need.

The reason for the first two became obvious as she tried to move. Some time in the night, they had rolled together into the middle of the bed, John’s long limbs almost blanketing her. She wiggled, but he made a noise in his sleep and tightened his grip.

Penny rolled her eyes. “Off, you oaf.” She jabbed her elbow backwards, hard as she dared, and heard a grunted noise of displeasure. But John woke up enough to roll onto his back, releasing her.

John’s voice was blurred with sleep. “Sorry.” The air was surprisingly cool as it rushed in to fill the spaces he left behind, and her skin prickled in response.

Penny half expected him to go back to sleep, but when she returned from the bathroom, he was sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes. “Morning, octopus.”

John made a face, and Penny laughed as she slid back under the sheets, popping up next to him. He wiggled as she laid her head on his shoulder, settling them both more comfortably. Sorry for, umm…”

“Cuddling like a cuddle monster in your sleep? Do I need to hug you more often?” John huffed under his breath, and Penny poked him, her finger pressing into his ribs until he squirmed. “It’s okay to ask for hugs, John.”

“From you, sure.” But he tucked her in closer. Penny didn’t press the point; they’d said all that needed to be said about that long before. He was who he was, and she was who she had chosen to be, and that was that. But for now they could lie in bed a little while longer before facing the world.

 


	4. Chapter Four: Seem’s our wishing well’s gone dry

Penny paused, well aware that the owners of the bed and breakfast were still watching them through a crack in the curtains. She ignored them, letting her eyes roam over the green bodywork, the matte soft-top still beaded with dew.

“What?” John asked, slinging their bags into the small storage compartment and closing the cover with a mechanical thunk.

“We need to name her.”

John frowned, leaning against the driver’s side door. “What, the car?”

Penny nodded, folding her arms so she could lightly rest her chin on her fingers. “Yes. We’re going to be spending the next week together. It’s only polite.” She ignored the way John tilted is  head at her. “What’s a good name?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but began to pace slowly around the vehicle. “She’s a Ginetta, so…Ginny?”

John, to his credit. didn’t laugh. though she caught the edge of a twitch in his smile. “Ginny is a good name. Can we go now?”

Penny snapped her fingers and held out her flat palm. John folded his arms. Penny raised an eyebrow. John sighed, but he was smiling softly as he lobbed over the key to land neatly in the center of Penny’s hand.

As Penny slid behind the wheel and started the motor, John levered himself into the passenger seat and began rummaging through the glove compartment until he sat back with Penny’s own sunglasses in his hand. “Wake me when there’s coffee,” he said, tipping his seat back, eyes dark behind the smoked glass.

Penny nodded and, jamming Ginny into gear, pulled out fast enough to send a spray of gravel splashing over the lawn.

* * *

Penny was the only person on earth who had any idea how close John came to quitting.

He had gone into it knowing it was going to be challenging. But he’d succeeded in all his undergraduate study, over-achieved at every level, every assignment weighed down with high grades and glowing comments.

Alone in the dark, stuffy room he shared with three other grad students, John was starting to doubt every achievement. Had he succeeded, or just managed to dodge every real challenge? The lack of structure now was unnerving, and everything he did seemed wrong.

His office mates had gone home hours ago, bundled up against the snow that was falling thickly, cocooning their building in silence. John’s desk was closest to the vent, and he leaned in, trying through willpower alone to coax a little more warmth out of the antiquated heating system.

On the screen in front of him, his code glowed gently, the brightness turned way down as precaution against the headache he felt lurking at the base of his skull.

His advisers had tried suggesting other projects. “You just need one contribution for a doctoral project, Mr Tracy,” the Dean had said, looking down the length of his nose at John. “Not reinvent three separate fields.”

Tonight he had given up on even one contribution; instead, he, was just messing about with some stupid code that he kept in a folder for night’s like these, when the words wouldn’t come and his ideas seemed as fragile as spun glass.

John studied the last few lines of code, wondered if he should make it ask _would you like to play a game_ as a trigger phrase, then dismissed the idea as stupid too.

Almost as a reflex, John reached for his comm. He had Penny’s contact up with a flick, her name first on his contacts list. His finger froze just above the call button.

She said she was going out tonight. John had spent every night this week with her, talking this problem through. She didn’t need him whining at her tonight too, she had other friends, a whole life that predated his arrival in England and that he wasn’t a part of.

John went back to playing with his code as outside the snow piled higher.

He woke to the buzz of his comm, rattling on his desk hard enough to bounce off his skull. John cracked the knots out of his neck as he flicked open the screen. _You’re not home? Staying warm, working hard?_

John glanced at the screen saver that had started automatically, his gaze shifting to look across the row of darkened desks. He’d pulled the hood of his hoodie up, but the room was cold enough that he could feel his breath crystallize in the air. _Aren’t you meant to be out painting the town red?_ he texted back instead and started counting.

Ten seconds later, his comm rang. “You know when you dodge my questions, I worry.”

“You notice, Pen,” John told her, turning his comm to speaker mode and setting it back on his desk. The movement jostled his computer awake, the code a glowing reminder of what he wasn’t doing. “That’s where you go wrong.”

The background noise of whatever party she was at faded further, like a door had closed. “That’s two. Avoid me a third time, John Tracy, and I’m coming over.”

“Don’t,” he sighed. “Sounds like a fun party.”

“Changing the subject is almost as worrying. Talk to me. Still struggling with the proposal?”

“Same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.” He took a deep breath, resting his chin on on his folded hands. “Think anyone would care if I quit the program and went to open a book store in Portland?”

“I think Portland has enough book stores, darling,” she chided gently. “I think they’re famous for it.”

“I don’t know, artisanal vegan yarn boutique, then,” John countered. “That market can’t be flooded yet.”

Penny chuckled, so soft it was barely caught by her comm. “But Portland is far away from me. I’d miss you.” Before John could speak, she continued on blithely. “Open it in Avebury, so I could visit you on weekends.”

That jolted a snort of laughter out of John. “I’d have to learn to knit.”

“Then you could teach me,” Penny said. The sound around her was changing, like she was out on the street now.

John sat in silence, studying his code. “You don’t seem too fussed with the idea of me quitting.”

Penny’s pause was almost as long. “Just as long as you don’t leave me behind too.”

There was an emotion in her voice that John wasn’t ready to identify. He closed his eyes. “I won’t.”

“Pinky promise.”

John nodded, already saving his work, shutting down his machine. “Double pinky. Now tell me you’re not walking home alone.”

Penny sniffed, and John could almost picture her putting her smile back together. “No, because you’re going to meet me at the all-night cafe and buy me a hot chocolate while I complain to you about all the beastly fellows who were at this wretched party.”

John was already shrugging on his coat. “On my way.”

* * *

"There’s another!” Penny had stolen back her sunglasses, but she lifted them up to read the sign as John let Ginny roll almost to a stop. “I think we take the next right.”

“Only one way to find out.” John was starting to love the way Ginny’s purr rolled out smoothly as he pressed the accelerator. Despite the season, the back roads were almost clear, most travelers packed together in the large coaches that plied the main roads between attractions.

As they came around the final curve, they almost ran up the back of one. Penny waved at the excited kids who filled the back window. John checked, indicated, then Ginny was roaring as he accelerated around the coach.

Over the road noise, they could just hear the excited whoops of the children as they raced the length of the coach to watch John and Penny roar by. Penny twisted in her seat, watching until the coach vanished behind them at the next curve. Sitting back around, she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You enjoyed that,” she said.

“ _Je accuse_?” John asked innocently, laying a hand on his chest. “Oh look, here we are. Avebury.”

 


	5. Chapter Five: We’ve lived too long too close

Penny had a knack of getting people to help her. John had stopped trying to understand – for him, the way that Penny made the world bend to her will would always be a kind of magic. He stood back, smiling politely at the other couple in the shop, pretending not to hear the whispers or see the looks they gave him and Penny.

More than one person mistook his admiration as a kind of love that he did not understand. He’d gotten used to having this thing between them misconstrued, learned to pick his battles.

The more charming Penny was, the more frequently it happened. Right now, it’s in the form of a nod towards him from the person behind the counter, a murmured comment, a label applied that John knew would never fit.

People were more subtle around him, or maybe he just needs to step back to see it. More than once he’d only registered after the fact what they had meant, when it was far too late to correct the misconception.

Penny had long ago stopped correcting people outright. Now, she just smiled, neither confirmed nor denied, and carried on towards her goal before ushering him out of the store.

“I’m going to have to buy you a ring before this week is over, aren’t I?” John asked, taking the heavy basket full of carefully chosen picnic supplies.

Penny shrugged, smiling. He could see himself in the reflection of her sunglasses, too tall, too pale, too out of place next to her. “I never say no to something shiny,” she teased.

“Did I ever tell you about when Dad asked me if I was thinking about it?” As soon as the words are out, he wanted to snatch them out of the air, stuff them back into the past where they belonged.

It’s too late. Penny was staring up at him with an intensity that made him squirm. “No,” she said, her words slicing through the warm summer’s day. “You did not.” Taking his hand, she half-dragged him over to the shady patch of grass she had spotted. “Sit. Food. Talk.”

They spread the blanket, Penny pushing a sandwich into his hands. John took a bite, stalling just slightly. Penny sipped her drink; she could always wait him out, and they both knew it.

“It wasn’t anything really. Just, when I told him I was coming here. To Cambridge, I mean. Before.” He shrugged, picking out a piece of lettuce with his fingers.

Penny raised an eyebrow.

John laughed softly, shaking his head. “I think he knew that you and I are…” his finger flicked quickly in the space between them. “Nothing like that. I think he just likes to speculate what if.” He put down his sandwich and sighed. “Mostly I think he’s just disappointed he won’t get you as a daughter in law.”

Penny shifted on the rug, closing the space between them. “Well, you do have four very handsome brothers, I wouldn’t rule it out just yet.”

John almost choked on his shock. “Penny!” he hissed, scandalized.

Penny laughed, tossing her mane of hair over her shoulder. “Just saying.” She reached over and stole half his sandwich from where he’d left it sitting on its wrapper. “Scott, maybe? I do like a man in uniform.”

John spluttered, his mind shorting out just thinking of it. “You’d murder him in his sleep before the honeymoon was over,” he said flatly.

Penny nodded. “Alright then. Virgil, maybe?” She was teasing, playing with him, and John recognized the tone. They’d played what-ifs and never-have-I ever before, this was just another game of speculation.

John found his footing again. “Virgil’s a soft touch. You’d ride right over him.”

Penny’s smile was a slow curve of her lips that revealed the tips of her white teeth. “Best way,” she leered.

John coughed and tried not to choke on his sandwich. Her laugh was bright like the pealing of a bell. “Penny!” he said, scandalized.

She reached over to drag the picnic box closer. “Don’t be so dramatic, John.” She pulled out a little bakery box. “Ooh, cupcakes.” She unfolded the lid. “Besides, you’re sounding like you don’t want me as your new sister. I’m hurt, John.” She folded one hand over her heart, eyes cartoonishly wide. “Hurt.”

“You’ll live,” he mumbled, scrunching up his wrapper and tossing it back into the box. He accepted the cupcake she passed to him. “Besides, you’re pretty much family already to everyone else too now.”

Penny licked a sprinkle off the tip of her finger. “To everyone else?” she asked, suddenly sounding a little unsure.

John rolled his eyes, not looking up from where he was concentrating on peeling the little paper cup off the bottom of his cake. “You are family to me, Pen.” He glanced up suddenly. “You know that, right?”

Penny shifted on the rug again, buying herself some time. “Nice to hear it again, though.”

John sighed and lifted his cupcake up out of the way. “Come here.”

Penny face was soft as she twisted on the spot and laid back, her head pillowed on John’s thigh. He brushed the drifting strands of her hair off her cheek with his free hand. “You’re probably the most important person in my life that I don’t share a genome with,” he told her. It had become easier, over the years, to put his feelings into words, at least for her.

Penny rolled her eyes, the corners creasing as she smiled. “Flatterer.”

“It would be a mouthful to say daily, but I’ll make the effort if you want me to.” John craned his neck to take a bite of his cupcake without spraying Penny with the crumbs. Below his hands, Penny tapped her lip thoughtfully.

“We would need to simplify it. For efficiency’s sake.” She let her hand fall, her fingers coming to rest splayed across her bare collarbone. “Of course, that brings us back to the problem of everyone assuming we’re, uh…”

“Doing the wild thing. Boning. Horizontal mambo. Down and dirty,” John suggested, managing to keep a straight face.

Penny’s laugh had her whole body lifting up for a moment. “I was going to say romantically involved. You beast,” she added, reaching up to lightly pinch his side. “I wish there was a nice neat cultural framework for friendship between consenting adults as well as, well, you know.”

“Choir, you are preaching to it,” John told her with a quiet huff.

“I know, darling,” Penny soothed, patting the point where she had pinched.

“On the plus side, when you meet somebody, they might finally stop speculating about us.” John meant to sound light, but even he could hear the odd note in his voice.

Penny rolled over so she was lying on her belly, resting on her forearms so she could look up at John. “John?”

“We’ve graduated, Pen. Aren’t you meant to be having wild adventures in dating.” Penny’s face took on a look of dawning horror. “Pen?”

“Oh.” She rolled back, onto her back, so her head was fully pillowed on John’s leg. “Oh, I was having such a nice day. Why did you have to say that?”

John stroked her hair. “Am I missing something?” John usually stumbled with other people like this, but rarely with Penny.

She took off her sunglasses and rubbed her closed eyes. “You just reminded me that, somehow, I am to make an appropriate match. Noblesse oblige, and all that.”

She sounded tired, flayed bare. “And that’s…a problem?” John asked hesitantly. Even objectively, John could appreciate Penny’s charms, and he knew she had dated before, even if only briefly.

“Not really. Maybe. Possibly. I don’t know. It just seems so…pre-programmed.” She winced, like she had tasted something sour. “My mother wasn’t in the family business, and I think that made things easier for her and my father.” She looked up at him. “Daddy used to say he trusted mama. I never understood how important that was, until I started my training for…well,” she demurred with a wave of her hand.

In all the years he’d known Penny, he’d never thought of it like that. “Do you…” he began hesitantly.

She cut him off almost brusquely. “I can count the number of people I trust that much on my fingers, John. And yes, you’re on that list.” She sighed and closed her eyes again. John could see her almost forcibly relaxing her muscles again. “But even if I wasn’t trained as that, there’s still the little question of money and land and titles.” She cracked open one eyelid. “You must understand that problem, at least.”

John winced, remembering ‘ _the talk_ ’ he and his brothers had all got, one after the other. The carefully worded warnings, to be wary and watchful, to be courteous, but never vulnerable.

To not trust.

John exhaled slowly. “Put like that, can you blame your family and mine match-making us like there’s no tomorrow?”

Penny’s answering little chuckle was equal parts tired and sarcastic. “Be grateful your future plans involve leaving Earth and all our mere mortal problems behind. Some days, I think I want to join you.”

“I count my blessings every day,” he assured her, sitting back. The blanket was pleasingly prickly under his palms, and John tilted his head up to feel the dappled sunlight play across his face.

He wanted to be able to remember this moment when everything else was night.


	6. Chapter Six: Now you’re asking can’t we just be friends

They end up taking a long stroll around the Avebury henge after their picnic. The sun had started it’s low slow arc towards the far horizon, but there were still enough people out that they could hear the distant sounds of a dozen conversations.

Penny’s arm brushed John’s as they made a slow circuit, weaving through the stone markers. “Do you ever wonder about alternate universes?” she asked.

John glanced fondly down at her. “I’m a nerd,” he reminded her gently. “Giant, giant nerd.”

Her grin is impish. “So that’s a yes?”

He looked skyward, as if seeking strength. “Yes, Pen,” he answered patiently. “I have thought about alternate universes. In fact,” he continued. “Our best theoretical models pretty much all predict many alternate universes, all co-existing in the quantum superstate…”

Penny cut off the looming lecture with a wave. “So somewhere out there in the quantum, there’s another you, and another me.” They paused at the edge of one of the roads that marked the quarters, running in and out of Avebury town. “Do you think they’re also standing by this road, in their universes?”

John thought for a moment, then stepped out onto the asphalt. “Well, think of all the steps I had to take, to bring me here. And all the steps you took. And all the other steps other people took, whose movements shaped our own.”

Penny stood at the strip of brown dirt that marked the edge of the road. “Is that your way of saying ‘no Penelope, there isn’t a santa claus’?”

John grinned at her, taking a few more steps back until he was in the middle of the road. “I’m saying, there are a billion forks and a trillion decisions that would all have to play out the same. One stray cosmic beam, hitting or missing your mother, and nine months later, a different child could have been born. Or a single strand of DNA bonding with one pair over another.” He waved his hand, taking in the vastness of the multiverse. “Out there, there’s a universe where I’m…” he made a face, trying to pick one alternative out of the infinite array.

“A girl?” Penny asked with a bright smile.

John nodded, considering the possibility. “A girl. In that universe, I might not have younger siblings.” Penny raised an eyebrow quizzically and John shrugged, almost apologetically. “I’m pretty sure my mother really wanted a daughter. Hence, five sons before they gave up. So no Virgil, or Gordon, or Alan, and all just from a change in a chromosome.”

Penny laughed, stepping onto the road and hooking her arm into John’s to tow him across. “Try another universe. Imagining you in pigtails and a pinafore is too strange, darling.”

John pulled her in close. “How about the universe where you’re a son.” Penny pushed against him in mute protest, and John yielded. “Or the universe where we don’t meet at all.”

Penny’s nose wrinkled. “I don’t like that universe. Another.”

John sighed, his creativity exhausted. “What else could change, but we could still be friends?”

“We could have met younger,” Penny offered after a moment’s thought. “All it would need is your family to be from Sussex rather than Iowa, and we’d have been the terrors of nursery school.”

John sniggered. “I am not even going to try the accent. What else?”

Penny’s smile crystallized and fractured. “I could not be a spy and you could not be an astronaut, and we could be making plans for next week, or next month, or next year.”

John looped an arm around her shoulder. “Well, in this universe, I’ll only ever be a call away.”

Penny leaned in, tucking her head against his shoulder. “But there are things I can’t say on a comm, no matter how good the encryption. And I won’t be able to do this-” she gently jabbed her finger into his ribs. “When you’re getting to lost in your own head.”

“I have to admit, I won’t miss being jabbed,” John teased gently.

“No sharing blankets on the sofa for Bad Movie Fridays,” Penny added, her voice changing from its previous bright playfulness. “No meeting for coffee. No…”

“Pen, stop,” John murmured, leaning down to kiss her head. They’d drifted to a stop in the lee of one of the larger stones. “Don’t…”

“I can be sad,” Penny cut him off sharply, feeling her eyes prickle. “Let me be sad,” she added, almost pleadingly. “John, I’m a spy, I hear secrets. I know how soon they’re going to send you up.”

John winced and looked away; he hadn’t known how to tell her, but he should have realized she’d figure it out anyway. She always figured out his secrets. He’d learned early on it was smarter to just not keep any. “Pen, please...”

Her hands are small where she’s gripping his waist. She looked up, facing him square on. “Let me enjoy having my best friend, right here where I can keep an eye on him, even if it’s just for a little while.”

John gathered her up, pulling her in tight. “Pen.” There was so much he wanted to say, but he felt so stripped bare by her honesty that the words didn’t want to come. “I’m going to miss you too.”

Penny sighed, her forehead bouncing lightly off his sternum. “Miss your face.”

John smiled weakly, gently pushing her around until she was resting, her back against his front. “Here.” He fished his comm out of his pocket and flicked on the front facing camera. “For when we both need the reminder.”

The selfie captured them at a slight angle, together in the shade of the standing stone, pale faced and smiling.

 


	7. Chapter Seven: And it’s better to just pretend

They’re don’t talk for most of the drive down the Severn. The stereo is off, the top down, and the roar of the wind fills their ears as they shoot towards Wales.

John’s driving. Penny for once yielded control without so much as a murmur, folding herself up in the passenger, curled so her shoulder was tucked into the upholstery, turned away from John.

John just drove, one hand on the wheel, the other arm braced along the top of the door frame, brain almost idling, letting random thoughts roll over him as the road rolled beneath.

John knew he had probably tripled his number of driving hours just this week. He wondered if he could include this on his CV under special skills, for all that he needed his CV anymore. Hardly anybody his age seemed to have their license, it probably counted as unique enough now to count.

There were trains running on the tracks parallel to the road, each carriage packed with travelers. They waved excitedly, but Penny never waved back. She didn’t even seem to see them, lost in her own thoughts.

The third Severn Bridge rose out of the horizon, dominating the landscape ahead. On the other side lay Cardiff, and the point where they would finally turn towards Scotland and the end of their impromptu tour.

Without asking, John swerved off onto a side lane, accelerating faster than he’d normally dare on so old and narrow a laneway.

Penny shifted in her seat, but still said nothing.

His instinct was good; the lane terminated in a dirt area, marked with the detritus of other long-departed cars. Every bridge in the world had a spot like this, where the locals came to fish, to hide, to make out or make up or just to get away for a while. But at this time of the day, it was empty.

“Come on,” he said, unbuckling his belt. “One last stomp in England.”

John was halfway to the nearest bridge support before he heard her door open and close. He forced himself not to look back, kept his head tilted up as if to admire the sweep of engineering that towered above him and extended out across the estuary.

The crunch of dry sand and gravel under sandals heralded Penny’s arrival. She stood, close enough to touch and yet miles away. In the distance, a crow cawed and a train whistle blew, but all around them was emptiness.

When Penny stepped forward, disappearing into the shadow of the bridge, John followed. “Do you have your comm?” she asked, her first words in hours.

John half-turned, gesturing over his shoulder. “It’s in my bag…”

Penny nodded decisively. “Good.” She took a deep breath, as if fortifying herself. “Can I tell you something, something that I’ve never told anyone?”

“Of course.” He didn’t even have to think about it.

Penny’s arms were folded tightly across the bodice of her sun dress. “I probably shouldn’t even be thinking this, let alone telling anyone…if they’ve got a bug, if they found out…” she trailed off, her eyes roaming around the shadows under the road deck. “But I think I might explode if I don’t.”

John stood, arms prickling in the cool air under the bridge, and waited.

She spun suddenly, tiny clouds of dust puffing up under her feet. “I know we never talk about exactly what they are training me to do, and I appreciate that, darling, I do. But you need to understand something.” She paused, her eyes closing for a moment before she opened them, her gaze locking with John’s. Her voice was flat, hard, unyielding. “I’m afraid.”

John risked half a step closer.

“I’m afraid,” she continued, enunciating each word clearly. “Of how easy everything they taught me was to learn. How natural it felt.” She chuckled, as if thinking of a private joke. “Of how powerful it makes me feel, sometimes.” Penny shook her head slowly, hair cascading in waves over her shoulders. “I could do so much damage, if I chose. They’ve shown me how to do so much, achieve any goal, and they trust me to use it wisely.” She took a step in towards John, closing the distance between them. Her eyes were huge, and dark, and pleading. “But I’m afraid of what I might do if I lose control, even for a moment.” She reached out, and John tangled his fingers with hers. “Do you know what that feels like?”

John bowed his head over their entwined hands. “I’m afraid too,” he whispered. He’d never even let himself think that phrase, and the words now stuck in his throat. “Everyone expects, and demands, and the standard is so, so high, and every time I achieve it, they just make it higher.” He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs. His eyes had closed, and he forced himself to open them. " Penny, there are days where all I want to do is stop. But if I stop, I don’t know if I’m me anymore.”

Her fingernails were digging into the flesh of his hand, and he didn’t care. John tipped his head, resting his forehead on hers. This close, he could count ever lash.

“We can’t let go, either of us, can we?” she murmured, barely louder than a breath.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” John agreed, the words tumbling together from some long-forgotten memory.

Penny spotted the reference anyway, as she always did. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” she finished. Her nose wrinkled, and shift lifted her head just enough to look at him face on. “I always preferred the last part of that verse.”

John thought for a moment. “The best lack all conviction,” he remembered.

“While the worse,” Penny finished with a weak and watery little smile. “Are full of passionate intensity.” She let one of her hands drop, turning them to stroll towards the wall that marked the bank of the Severn.

Beyond the wall, the waters were a muddy, murky brown. “Which one are we?” John asked finally, the words still turning themselves over in his mind.

Penny leaned in. “I guess we won’t know until we’re done.”

Waves lapped at the concrete foundations, the only other noise. John squeezed her hand. “Penny? For what it’s worth? Even if you don’t trust yourself? I trust you.”

She didn’t look up at him. “And I know you’ll never stop. So where does that leave us?”

John didn’t have an answer.


	8. Chapter Eight: And both of us got wise

The rain swept up the Severn and slammed into them like a wall of water. It was all Penny could do to gasp at the suddenness of the storm.

She turned at John’s huffy little laugh. “Summer storms, huh?” He was blinking rapidly to keep the drips out of his eyes, his eyelashes clumping together as the onslaught intensified.

“Thank global warming,” Penny replied. They had strolled maybe half a mile from the car, and her sundress and his thin t-shirt were no match for the warm, heavy rain. She winced at the slap of drenched fabric against her thigh. “Good thing we put Ginny’s top back on.”

John gave her a dry look from under a soggy brow. His hair was plastered to his head. “Come on, let’s go.”

With as much dignity as they could muster, they turned back for the car.

* * *

They spread out the picnic blanket to save the upholstery, and cranked the little heater, but by the time they rolled into Cardiff, Penny was feeling cold and clammy, her dress sticking to her in thoroughly unpleasant ways. The rain had eased to a drifting haze, but it set a chill against her damp skin, and the gloom it brought forced her to concentrate on navigating the unfamiliar streets.

She had no idea what day it was, but Cardiff had a closed off look as darkness closed in. “There,” John said, pointing for a moment before he went back to huddling up against the heater vent. “Up ahead.”

The hotel was small, the kind that called itself boutique when the proper word was probably poky. But it was clean, and dry, and warm, and Penny could hear the faint sounds of the other guests through the walls, all cooped up by the summer’s rain.

John appeared from the bathroom, towel thrown casually around his shoulders, naked to the waist. “Do you want first shower?” he asked, crossing the room in two long strides to the furtherest of the twin beds. “Also, why do your lot build rooms so tiny? I swear, I bashed my elbow on every flat surface in there.”

Penny reached around the bathroom door to find a towel of her own. The bathroom was indeed what was probably described on the listing as ‘bijou.’ “It’s your fault for getting so tall,” she told him, shaking out the towel and tossing it over her still-wet hair. The rhythms of the argument were a comfort. “Honestly, darling,” she added, her voice a little muffled under the thin terry. “It’s a bit ridiculous how long you are.”

“Ridiculous, huh?” His voice was close, and she gasped as his arms slid over her arms and tugged her into a hug. “I don’t recall you complaining about how long I was when you wanted a cuddle.”

Penny hated herself a little for leaning in. John was still shirtless, and she was being gently held against acres of warm, pale skin. She didn’t consider herself touch-starved, but there was something about skin-on-skin contact that was different.

John, bless him, didn’t so much as murmur as Penny let herself a moment just to nuzzle in and rest against his chest. “You okay there, Pen?” he finally asked as the seconds ticked into minutes.

Penny tried to step away, but it was hard, and John laid his hand across her shoulder blades, gently encouraging her to stay. “It has been an unexpectedly over-emotional day,” she admitted finally, the sternness of her voice undercut by the way she was leaning nearly all of her weight into John. “Don’t judge me.”

“No judging.” John’s voice was warm, amused, and Penny could feel the rumble in his chest vibrate through all the places they were touching. She gave in and threw propriety to the wind, winding her arms around his waist to squeeze him tight. John curled slightly around her and let her hold on for as long as she wanted.

 * * *

If there was one thing John understood, it was space. Despite the tiny room, the fact that they were cooped up with the darkness of night and the rain still falling outside, John still managed to make Penny not feel trapped.

She’d taken the shower, running the taps until her skin was wrinkled and feeling slightly boiled. She’d left her clothes outside, but when she’d peeked around the door, John was lying on the far bed, back to her, engrossed in a book.

Penny hitched her towel higher and tip-toed over to where their bags lay, discarded by the bureau.

John’s hoodie was piled on top of one of them. Penny took that as invitation, shrugging into it over the top of her pajamas.

She felt better, warm and wrapped up and safe. Now she just to deal with the elephant in the room. Taking a deep breath, she sat on the edge of John’s bed. “Hi?”

John lowered his book, rolling back slightly. He’d changed, to sweats and a henley with long sleeves that ended in little thumb holes. “Hi yourself. Feeling better?”

Penny nodded, feeling a faint blush stain her cheeks. “Sorry for melting down all over you…” she winced as she tallied the score. “Twice in one day.” Her fingers were bunching up the covers, and she forced her hand to still.

John was watching her, studying her. “Meltdown now is better than a giant explosion later,” he finally said, fully rolling onto his back to stare up at her.

“Neither would be preferable.” Penny made a soft noise of pain. “No one can ever know,” she added.

“I know a little about keeping up appearances,” John agreed with an ironic snort. “But Pen, you never have to fake it with me. You know that right?”

Penny nodded mutely. Her muscles were vibrating with the strain of holding herself back from just leaping onto John and hiding there until the world went away.

John pushed himself up so that he was resting on his elbows. “Pen?”

Penny squared her shoulders. “Third and final meltdown. I dump so much on you, but you shouldn’t have to deal with my crap. You know you can tell me no. I don’t want to be a….”

“Pen,” John cut her off. He sat fully up, one leg tangling up the covers as he moved in close. “You are not a burden, or a pain, or anything. I want to know when you’re not doing well.” He smiled, and leaned in even closer. “I worry about you. You’re like me, you never ask for help. But I want to help you.”

Pen twisted, mirroring his posture. “But who helps you?”

This close, she could count his freckles against the faint blush of his cheeks. “You do,” he said simply. “You trust me, and I trust you.” He smiled, looking away. “You know, I used to worry a lot that I was bothering you. You’re my only friend that’s not family or anything. Not duty. I used to think you were tolerating me, that I was too much. Still do, sometimes. If we’re being honest.”

“John…”

He shook his head, turning back to meet her eyes. “But I trust you, Pen. I trust you to call me out, and to tell me no, and tell me if I’m too much for you, too. And I trust you to tell me what you need.”

Penny felt her world settle. “Same for you, John Tracy.”

John’s head tipped back as he huffed a laugh. “I promise to use my words.” His smile died. “I mean, I’m going to have to once I’m…on duty.”

Penny grabbed his chin with her fingers and physically made him look at her. “Hey. Only a call away, remember.” The words tasted like chalk against her tongue.

“Right,” John said, eyes drifting closed. When he opened them, his gaze was clear and guileless. “Ok, using my words. Here goes.” He took a deep breath, as if steeling himself. “You’re the only person that touches me and doesn’t want anything back.” He winced. “Mom used to do that, but dad never seemed to do it right, and…” he winced. “And it’s been nice, these last few days. I get you to myself, and…” he shook his head. “I’m saying this wrong.” He took another deep breath, and Penny waited patiently, mind roiling, as John composed himself, choosing his own words with care. “And I kind of want to hug you right now, if that would be alright…”

Penny didn’t let him finish. She pounced, too fast, misjudging the angle. John yelped as they toppled backwards off the narrow bed in a crash of bodies and bedding.

Penny froze, sprawled over John. “Bugger,” she cursed succinctly. “You alright there, darling?”

John started laughing. “Is it too late to rescind the request? Ow, oh, that’s going to bruise.”

Penny went to get up, stilling as John grabbed her hand. “Darling? Come on,” she chided gently. “Who knows when they last cleaned that floor.”

John was looking around the room. “I just realized what we need.”

“Food?” Penny asked, dusting off her pajama pants with her free hand.

“And,” John said, cross-legged and grinning. “A pillow fort.” His eyes were dancing as he grinned enticingly.

Penny’s first instinct was to tell him ‘no.’ But that was Lady Penelope speaking, and in this room, there was just John and Pen. “A pillow fort,” she repeated slowly. “Well, why not?” She looked around, counting chairs and folded blankets and pillows.

"Trust me, Pen, I’m a doctor.” He even waggled his eyebrows, and Penny burst out laughing.

"Have you been sitting on that one since campus? Fine,” she acquiesced, throwing her hands in the air. “Start building, good doctor. I’m going to have some food sent up. Oh, and John?” she added before he could move. “In this friendship, hugs are free. Got it? Good.” She snatched up her comm and ignored the sounds of destruction and creation behind her as she placed their order.


	9. Chapter Nine: It’s just a lot to ask to watch your future walking past me

It’s warm and dark under the low canopy of blankets John has engineered. Penny flopped backwards, her head pillowed on John’s thighs, and gave into the urge to burp.

“Penny!” John chided, sounding mildly scandalized.

“Blame the pizza,” she replied, unrepentant. She wiggled, getting comfortable. “I think I have a food baby.”

“Call the National Enquirer,” John shot back drolly. But he started stroking her hair, and Penny felt like purring.

“It’s the Daily Mail here, darling,” she corrected. Her fingers brushed the blanket roof as she sketched out the marquee. “Lady and Pizza’s Scandalous Love Child.” She felt John’s chuckle reverberate through his body. “I’d be the talk of the town.”

John’s fingers slowed their gentle strokes. “Do you think you’ll ever have a child, Pen?”

Penny’s eyes flew open at the hugeness of the thought. “I suppose I will. I have no siblings and no cousins, it would be a shame to let the Creighton-Ward name die out with me. With the right person, of course. That’s the sticking point.” She jabbed her elbow into his hip. “If worse comes to worse, how do you feel about a turkey baster and co-parenting?”

It was only because she was sprawled across his lap that she felt him twitch. “That’s something to consider.”

She twisted her neck to look up at him, trying to gauge his thoughts. “You hadn’t?”

“Not with a turkey baster, no.” He sounded odd, trying and failing at levity. He fell silent, and Penny eventually resorted to poking him again. He sighed, his entire body lifting and falling with the motion. “I resigned myself a long time ago that kids and who I was were incompatible.” He grinned down at her. “Sexual activity and an address not in low earth orbit are generally considered pre-requisites for the PTA, Pen. Besides,” he added with a shrug. “Younger brothers, remember. Orphaned early.  I got all my parenting out of the way early.”

Penny rolled and sat up, drawn by the sad, soft note in John’s voice. “John, I know you’re…you. But that doesn’t mean these things are closed off from you.”

John shrugged, avoiding her eyes. “Kind of think it does, Pen. At least, in any of the usual ways, and I don’t think I want kids _enough_ to try any of the others.” He managed a weak, teasing little smirk. “As attractive as the turkey baster sounds.”

Now that she was thinking about it, the huge complexity of John’s existence unrolled in her mind. “You knew that young, you didn’t want the, ah, usual ways?” she tried at last, tiptoeing through this conversational mine field.

John rolled his eyes. “Yes, Penny,” he said with exaggerated patience. “I’ve always known.”

“But…”

John made a noise of annoyance. “When was your first crush, Pen?”

Penny thought. “When I was seven, there was this charming young French boy. Olivier,” she remembered. “Son of a diplomat. He promised me a princess wedding and everything.” She sighed at the memory.

“I never had a crush,” John said flatly. “I didn’t even _understand_ it.”

“Darling, you know it’s okay…” she began

John sighed, sounding exhausted. “Pen, please, listen. You, of all people…just listen.” He shook his head, as if resettling his thoughts. “I didn’t understand it, it was so _alien_. Everyone was like you, play acting marriage and pushing their teddy bears around like babies. And then as we got older, and girls would dare each other to kiss a boy. And then people were going on actual dates and stuff, and…well, you know how it goes.”

Penny nodded, transfixed. She remembered Allison in her first dorm, who had a list of every boy in class, and how she’d tick off the names, one stolen kiss at a time. “Did the girls chase you?”

John shook his head. “No, thank goodness. I was either their token male friend, or I was ignored. To be honest,” he added. “I preferred to be ignored. At least I knew they wouldn’t change their minds just when I was starting to trust them.” He sounded so hurt, the kind of old pain that never fully goes away, that Penny reached up to touch his cheek. He shook his head, dislodging her fingers as he slammed back into the present. “But here’s the thing, Pen. Everyone around me seemed to be moving to some script I’d never received. I tried to fake it,” he added, and Penny blinked in surprised. “For the record, and in case that was your next question, I have dated someone.”

Penny curled in towards him; their little pillowfort was warm and intimate, and seemed to invite a trip down memory lane. “And how did that go?”

John snorted, sounding a little angry with himself. “About as well as expected. It was like wearing someone else’s clothes, like I was ad-libbing a scene where everyone else had a script memorized.” He smiled down at her, a faint blush high on his cheeks. “But everyone kept saying I just needed to ‘get in there.’” His imitation was so good, Penny almost heard the echo of Scott. “I even tried to kiss her,” he added like an afterthought.

Penny sat up in shock. “Really?”

John nodded. “Well, more attacked with the mouth, really,” he admitted sheepishly, his nose wrinkling. “It ended about as well as could be expected. Anyway, my point was that what was so right, and important and normal for everyone else was wrong for me. It was such a relief to find the words to describe what was I felt.”

Penny did him the courtesy of _thinking_ her next words through carefully. “I honestly can’t even imagine it. It’s such a part of who I am.”

John rolled his eyes. “So you can see my problem.”

Penny pawed through her own memories, pulling up time after time when the reality that she would date, explore, make out and eventually fall in love or marry was taken as bedrock. “Well, shit.”

John burst out laughing, flopping backwards onto the floor. “That pretty much sums it up.”

Penny’s curiousity was piqued now. She shuffled around, twisting until they were both curved like ying and yang on the floor, propped up by pillows so they were face to face. “So…I mean, everything works, right?” she dared, waving down John’s body

She loved making John laugh like this. “Yes, Pen,” he eventually answered, struggling to keep a straight face. “It all works. It even, y’know, feels good. I just don’t…” his nose wrinkled as he searched for the words. “It’s not a compulsion.” He looked at her, and his eyebrow twitched. “Is it for you?”

Penny was expecting the comeback; she held her face impassive. “I can confirm that women do indeed get blue balls.” That earned her another laugh.

She brushed her hair out of her face as John tilted his head, thinking of his next question. “What does it feel like?”

Penny plumped up the pillow she was sprawled on. “What does what feel like, darling?”

His smile was small, and soft, and sad. “I don’t know….falling in love, or lust, or whatever. What does it actually feel like?”

The question staggered her. “Wow. Um, no, I can answer,” she hurried to add as John started to pull back. “It’s…it’s like a tug, like a magnet, or a twitch. Right from your middle. Or,” she struggled with the metaphor. “Like a spark of connection.” She looked at John’s confused face, and added impishly. “And sometimes someone is just so attractive your panties get wet.”

John hit her with a pillow.

There was a brief, laughing struggle that subsided as quickly as it had started, the blankets billowing dangerously above their heads. They ended up at right angles, heads close together. “But seriously, John," she whispered, nuzzling onto his shoulder. "You, me, and a turkey baster is my backup plan. Just so you know.”

John brushed his nose against her hair. “That much ginger in one genome? Think of the poor children.”

Penny stared up at the blanket just above their heads. “Hush, you and I would make brilliant, brilliant babies.”

“Who would burst into flames at the slightest hint of sunlight. Find someone who actually tans, Penny. Do it for the future.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But brace yourself, my prospects are dire.”

John kissed her forehead. “Have you tried a dating service?”

Penny sniggered. “Oh, the background checks alone would be beastly."  She nudged him with her chin. "Set me up with a friend.”

“You are my friend,” he retorted, sounding sleepy. “You and my brothers.”

“At least three of you are old enough to drink, so come on. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

She felt John’s smile. “I’ll be sure to mention that the next time we’re all in the same city. Now hush. Sleep,” he crooned.

Penny rolled, curling up against John’s chest, and let the counterpoint of his breathing and the rain outside lull her to sleep.


	10. Chapter Ten: And I can’t see you waiting

Penny was smiling, the wind in her hair and the sun on her cheeks, and John wanted to capture the moment forever. “What are you grinning about?” Penny asked, raising her voice to be heard over the wind noise.

“Just thinking,” he called back. “Where are we going, anyway?”

Penny laughed. “Up!”

John had done his stint on the simulators already. That was nothing compared to Lady P., a sports car, and the Black Mountain Pass.

* * *

John was six when he knew what he wanted to do with his life. Like the Pole Star, being an astronaut pulled his life relentlessly forward.

He rarely fully understood other people, but he knew what a calling was before he hit grade school. His answer never changed, despite the constant questioning: “What do you want to be when you grow up, little Johnny?”

It’s only now, when the goal is close enough to touch, that John wonders if an astronaut is his complete and final answer to the question.

* * *

They stop at a castle, perched high on a hill. The climb up was narrow and winding, the path wide enough for only a single person cut right into the rock. Penny took the lead, bounding up and through the gate, a figure in pink striding across the windswept courtyard to get their passes.

John turned, sucking in deep breaths as he took in the sweeping views back down the mountain. The horizon was hazy, and he wondered if, on a clear day, he could see the sea.

“Ready?” Penny asked, re-materializing at his side.

It was still early enough that the tour buses hadn’t yet made it through the switchback curves up the mountain. Penny took charge again, ducking under the rusted portcullis and turning for the nearest tower.

It was dark and cool, and John let his fingers trail over the rough stone as they ascended the spiral staircase to the highest level. “Have you been here before?” he asked.

Penny paused, turning to look back at him. “This castle? No. But when I was a girl, sometimes the nanny took me on daytrips out to National Heritage places. There really are only so many ways to lay out a castle. And if I’m right…” she slipped her hand into his and tugged him along. “Yes, here we go.”

The roof and part of one wall were gone, opening the area to the warm sunshine. Penny turned like a flower towards the light. “I love these old places,” she murmured as John stepped closer to the edge. “So much has happened on these stones.”

“War, death, disease, famine,” John reeled off, smiling as Penny’s punch hit his shoulder hard enough to make his stagger a step to the side. “You know I’m right.”

Penny sighed and joined him, looking out towards the horizon. “You’ve not a romantic bone in your body. Haven’t you ever thought what you’d do if suddenly you had a time machine?”

“Sure I have,” John agreed easily. “I’d take it apart to figure out how it worked. Added bonus, no-one else could use it and mess up causality.”

Penny made a noise of mock-scandal, laying one hand delicately on her chest. “John Glenn Tracy, that is a scoundrel move, and you know it.”

John shrugged, unperturbed. “It’s what I’d do.”

Penny thought about it for a moment. “Alright then. Not a time machine. A time portal. No moving parts, no engine to dismantle. What now, clever boy?”

“I wouldn’t step through,” John parried. But Penny went around his every defense, as she always did.

“Imagine there’s a time portal in front of you, and me behind you with a very pointy knife.” John laughed, and Penny cocked her head to glare at him. “And I’m in a stabby mood. So you have to step through, your only choice is where you land. Name your date, sir.”

John bit his lip. “1969.”

Penny scoffed. “June, I bet,” she added, barely waiting for John’s nod of confirmation. “Predictable.”

He shrugged, slightly put off by her exasperation. “Moon landing, Penny. First time a human being walked on another world. Where else would I go?”

Penny sighed, even as she looped her arm in his, snuggling in close. “Where else indeed. I do think, darling, if you were ever cut in half, we’d find astronaut engraved on your heart.”

John made a noise, deep in his throat. “That’s macabre.”

She shrugged slightly. “I don’t hear you denying it.”

John let his head tilt back. The sky was a dome of blue. “Alright then,” he said. “1680. Let’s go to 1680.” He grinned down at her look of confusion. “What? Still too predictable?”

She hip-checked him, yanking him back with her grip on his arm when he went to move away. “All right, I yield,” she said with a delicate eye roll. “What happened in 1680.”

“Flamsteed observed two comet passes that year, and from that, he first proposed the idea of comets as objects moving in and out of the solar system.” He smiled beatifically at her.

Penny gave him a very old look. “Can you name one historical event you would go to that is not related to space, stars, or astronomy in any way?”

He shrugged again, beyond feeling apologetic for this. “I know what I like.”

Penny sighed. “I do adore your passion, darling, honestly, I do.”

John let her settle herself more comfortably against his side. “That’s a statement in need of a ‘but,’” he prompted gently.

Penny spoke carefully, like someone tip-toeing through a minefield. “However,” she began, moving with John’s little shrug at her contrariness. “There is a whole wide world out there. I just don’t want you to miss something else you might love because of your tunnel vision.”

John had heard this all before, though usually not so delicately put. “I understand,” he told her, because this was Penny, and she had earned an answer. “And I don’t want to close my eyes. I just…” he shrugged, feeling his nose wrinkle as he fought for the right words. “I just haven’t seen anything else I like as much as that.”

Penny nodded, accepting his answer on face value like few others did. “Alright. But if you do see something,” she leaned in. “I want to be the first to know.”

John brushed his nose against her hair, sealing the deal. “Agreed. Now you.”

“Where would I go if I had a time machine?” It was an awkward segue, and they both knew it, but Penny let it pass unremarked.

“Time portal,” John corrected, grinning impishly. “Imagine I, though some very unlikely chain of events, manage to wrestle that very pointy knife off you. Time to jump, m’lady, so where do you go?”

They had wandered a full circuit back to the passage to the stairwell. This time, John took the lead, feeling his way carefully down a level.

“I think,” Penny concluded as they stepped out into the gloomy half-light of the next complete room. “I think I’d start with the medieval period. Maybe late medieval?” She shrugged.

John grinned. “You would willingly choose a time of sewerage going into the drinking water, open warfare and everyone dead by twenty-five?”

Penny was unperturbed by John’s litany. “Yes, but also, women running the entire castle while the men were out of the way playing knights.”

“Ahh,” John said. “I see. You just want to be queen of your own castle, hmm?”

Penny’s smile lit up the room. “Wherever I go, I want to be in charge, is that so wrong? But yes, the disease aspect doesn’t sound particularly pleasant.” She tugged him down a side passage. “Maybe I’ll go to the 20th century instead, and play a queen in the movies.” She tossed her hair dramatically. “Golden age of Hollywood, I think I’d make a fabulous femme fatale.”

“Aren’t you that already?” John asked dryly, bursting into laughter at Penny’s expression.

“Well, in this situation, you have the knife,” she pointed out in a voice that promised trouble, as they turned down another corridor that linked the ruins to the restored parts of the castle. “Where would you force me to next?”

Just at that moment, a docent appeared from around the nearest corner. Staring at them, eyes wide, she scuttled past them and through a side door.

John and Penny watched her go, then turned to each other. Their laughter echoed off the stone walls. “Poor dear,” Penny said through her giggles. “That must have sounded unusual.”

“Hey,” John replied. “You’re the one who let me get the knife in this scenario.”

“She’s probably gone to alert security.” Penny seemed remarkably unfazed by the thought as she resettled herself on John’s arm. “But you still haven’t said, where in history would you drop me?”

John made a dismissive noise. “Does it matter? No matter where I pick, let’s be honest, you’d be ruling the era inside of a month.”

Penny bobbed delightedly against him. “That is the sweetest thing, darling,” she cooed.

John felt warm through. “I would probably pick some time glamorous for you, though. Just so you could really enjoy it.”

Penny fluttered her eyelashes. “And it isn’t even my birthday, you charmer.”

Just then, another docent appeared at the far end of the hall. He eyed the pair of them up and down, before smiling politely at them. “Getting along a’right there, are we?”

Penny smiled back. “Oh, we’re having a delightful time, thank you.”

* * *

Later, as the first bus appeared in the gravel lot, Penny adjourned them to the small teahouse that now occupied a barn close to the castle walls. John sat back, watching the guides try to herd their charges up the narrow, steep path. “Penny?” he asked. “When did you know what you were going to do with your life?”

She paused, her butter knife hovering above her scone. “I’ve always known,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I think. It was, well, it was fate accompli I suppose.” She finished her task and laid the knife aside. “I mean, they weren’t pushy about it, but it was always fairly clear which way I was being shoved, if you take my meaning.”

John sipped his tea to stall for time.

Penny filled the silence. “But, if I think about it, being pushed made me think about what I really wanted.” She shrugged, her cup clinking as she lifted it from the saucer. She smiled, red lips over bone-white china. “And you know I always get what I want, darling. What about you?”

John placed his own cup down. “I know where I want to end up,” he admitted. “I’m just not always sure I’m taking the best path there.”

Penny studied his profile for a long moment before she nudged half her scone over towards John. “Well, for a start, I thought we could follow this road, see if it leads to glamour or adventure, or at least somewhere with a nice view for lunch.”

John reached for her plate. “That sounds…nice.”


	11. Part 11: But this pain in my chest still rings

They crossed the Welsh border almost without realizing. There were no real markers, just a subtle sense of change as they drove deeper back into England. The silence was easy and companionable, neither feeling the need to break it as the tyres hummed beneath them.

Penny was in the passenger seat, her hand held the open window out to catch and surf on the wind, her entire body resting against her other arm folded against the window sill. “Is it lonely in space?” she asked suddenly, still watching the way her extended hand rode the slipstream.

John’s gotten comfortable behind the wheel. He kept his eyes on the road as he considered the question. “I’ve only really visited before,” he said at last. “Space tourism,” he added dryly. “Such an authentic astronaut experience.”

Penny laughed, finally turning to face him. She curled up in her seat, knees drawn up loosely towards her chest. “Most astronauts usually have a crew, even if it’s just one other person,” she pointed out reasonably. “A partner.”

John smiled, glancing quickly sideways at her before returning his attention to the road. “What would I do with a partner?”

Penny smiled even as she rolled her eyes. “Someone to talk to?” she suggested.

“I talk to you, Pen-pen.”

“And I am quite incredible,” she agreed. “But don’t you ever want to talk to someone else.”

John reached out blindly to squeeze her hand. “Like you say, you’re incredible.”

She slapped him away, laughing. “You know what I mean. Fine,” she added with a little shrug. “Be a lonely space hermit all by yourself in your magical tin can. See if I care.”

John had to laugh out loud at her tone. “I think I’d need a beard to be a hermit, officially.”

Penny cast a critical gaze over his face. “Can you even grow a beard?”

“Not one that could be seen in polite company,” John said, managing to keep a straight face.

“But,” Penny pointed out in her most reasonable voice. “You wouldn’t be in polite company, or indeed any company. We’ve established this.”

“ _But_ ,” John retorted, matching her tone. “We have also established that I talk to you. And you don’t deserve the horror of that much ginger in one go.”

“You should see the drain in my bathroom,” Penny muttered, and John burst out in surprised laughter. “Stop that,” she added. “You know me well enough not to expect Her Ladyship all the time.”

John forced his breathing back under control. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” The hum of the engine marked out the next few minutes before he spoke again. “What about you?”

“What about me, darling?” she asked, letting her head roll against the rest.

“Are you lonely, being a Lady?” he asked.

Penny blinked slowly. He’d asked the question without any artifice; John always seemed to catch her out most when he was being straightforwardly honest. “I’ve never thought about it in those terms,” she finally answered, speaking slowly, thoughtfully. “Maybe.”

John’s gaze slide sideways again. “Do you need a partner?”

She poked him in the arm. “I have you. Wait, did you just argue me into agreeing with you?”

He beamed sunnily. “I am awesome.”

She poked him again, harder, just to hear him laugh.

* * *

They skirted between Liverpool and Manchester before finding again the coast road. “Blackpool,” Penny said, reading the signs. She’d taken over driving again, John half-dozing in the passenger seat. “Oh, we must stop and get some Blackpool Rock.”

“You just want to spoil your dinner,” John yawned, pulling himself up out of the slouch he’d slipped into. “Isn’t Blackpool where the roller coaster is?

Penny’s eyes lit up

* * *

They ended up finding a small B&B, pausing only to drop their bags on the bed before they headed for the promenade.

The afternoon was shifting into the evening, and the early summer air was balmy. Around them, other couples and other families walked, their quiet conversations turning into a susurration punctuated by the happy yells of children as they raced up and down from the beach to the path and back again.

Penny wove her arm around John’s, leaning in even as they fell into step with one another. Ahead of them, they could see the undulations of the roller coaster, but they were in no hurry.

Penny could almost hear John’s mind whirring. “Penny for your thoughts?”

He grinned. “Is that weird for you to say?”

She shrugged. “I’m a Penny, and I want your thoughts. So I think you need to tell me. I suspect it’s a rule.”

“Right,” John drawled before falling silent once more.

She counted to sixty in her head before she elbowed him gently. “Darling?”

He looked up towards the distant roller coaster. “Just thinking about what you said earlier. About being alone.”

“Yes?” she prompted as he fell silent again.

“Look around you. Really look. What do you see?”

Penny glanced around. “People. Lots of people. John, really…”

John jostled her slightly, never breaking step. “Look closer.”

Penny rolled her eyes, but John was staring at her intently. Curiousity piqued despite herself, Penny looked.

John hummed quietly to himself as Penny gasped softly. “See it?”

“The old man, on the bench. That teenager, in the jacket. The woman, about twenty meters ahead,” she murmured, rattling off a few more that, now she was looking for, she couldn’t not see.

“Everyone thinks that to be alone is to be lonely. I always thought to be lonely but not alone was far worse.” John sounded almost serene. Penny found herself staring at the woman walking ahead of them, noticing how her shoulders were slumped, her arms tightly folded, the too-big and too-heavy sweater she was wearing despite the warm evening air.

“When I’m up there, I’ll be able to see and hear everything, and when I speak, people will listen. I’ll be alone, but not forgotten, not cut off.” John’s voice took on such a wry tone that Penny dragged her gaze around to his face. “I know what that feels like.”

“Oh darling,” Penny sighed, stopped them right there on the promenade to hug him.

He chuckled in her ear. “To be honest, Pen, I’m more worried about you than me. Who’s going to look at you and see you, the real you?”

“I’m kind of a big deal, John Tracy,” she said straightening up with a sniff. “People see me all the time.”

John wasn’t swayed. “They see the Lady, or the asset. Who sees Penny?”

Penny felt her eyes prickle, and she pulled herself together with pure force of will. “You do, in your high castle.” She squeezed his hands. “You always answer, when I call.”

“Always will,” John answered like a promise.

They resumed their slow amble along the promenade. “I think that’s what I’m going to enjoy the most,” John added like an afterthought.

“Hmm?” Penny asked, resting her head against his bicep.

John tucked her under his arm. “I’ll be able to see everything. I’ll be able to see those people who are alone and need help. And I’ll be able to do something about it.”

“My hero,” Penny said, trying for gently teasing but ending on sincere.


	12. Part Twelve: And I’m Ready To Let You Go

Penny took them the circuitous route out of Brighton, past nothing much, before finally turning inland to follow the signs to Scotland. Outside, the skies grew grey, and a heavy splatter of rain began to fall across the wind shield

Sunk low in the passenger seat, John let the scenery pass as he flicked through his photographs on his comm – some scenery, some selfies, most with Penny nestled in his arms, both smiling up at the camera.

He tagged in the metadata, moving each photo to the appropriate folder in long-term storage.

Over the years, they’d taken a lot of photographs together.

He found himself scrolling slowly through his _Penny_ tag. Penny in an evening gown, the dress bright against his matte black dinner suit. Penny, almost drowning a one of his borrowed shirts. Penny. Penny. Penny.

The next photo was of Penny and John leaning over Alan, laughing. Alan was still in his old school uniform, and John covered his mouth, remembering that day.

“What’s so funny, darling?” Penny asked.

“Do you remember that time you came with me to collect Alan from school for the holidays?”

Penny laughed. “All those sweet boys. So charming,” she added drolly.

John snickered to himself as he set the photograph as his new background. “You sweeping Alan out of there like royalty, leaving all those broken hearts behind.”

“Teenage boys are easy. Well,” she added with a sideways glance. “Most teenage boys.”

“You got me,” John replied, folding up his comm and tucking it away. There had been no messages from his family in days. He wasn’t sure he had even been missed yet.

“You were my science experiment,” Penny teased.

“Really, Doctor Frankenstein?” John shifted on his seat, getting comfortable. The windows were misting slightly as the rain rolled over them, their car a little box of warmth on the otherwise desolate road. “Did I rise from the lab table and rampage through the village as expected?”

Penny shrugged, shifting them down a gear to ease around a slippery corner. “I expected more pitchforks most days, to be honest.” That provoked another laugh out of John. Penny glanced sideways at him, smiling to herself at how at ease he looked, sitting beside her.

He tilted his head, and his next words were soft. “Why do you get me?”

Penny blinked twice in surprise. “I suppose I always have,” she began, sounding uncertain even to herself.

“Yes,” John said. Penny knew that voice, had heard it at every seminar of his she had attended, when some poor mortal asked some question that had set them up for destruction. “You have. Since day one, if I remember rightly.”

Penny shrugged again. “I actually thought you a bit strange, at first.”

“Says the woman who began by reciting nursery rhymes.”

“Which you understood,” she parried back, just as fast. John turned away to glance out the windscreen, and Penny sighed. “My mother used to tell me that she thought everyone has these, well, these _edges_.” Her fingers flicked and twitched on the steering wheel as she tried to sketch the shape of the thought. “And some people, their edges clash and collide. Others have the kind of shape that lets different types of edges to get close. And some people just…”

“Click,” John finished for her quietly.

“Yes. _Click_. And you, John Tracy, have perhaps the most complex border topography known to man.” John chuckled, but didn’t deny it. “But your complex matches mine. Mama always said you should be grateful any time you find a shape that matches your own.”

“I am,” John said. The two words carried the weight of a vow.

Penny reached out, finding his hand and squeezing it gently. “So am I.”

* * *

They crossed the border and stopped at Gretna Green. “Why all the references to the blacksmith?” John asked as Penny came around the car to join him on the sidewalk.

She found his hand again without thinking. “In the old days, runaway couples used to cross the border her to get married. They didn’t need witnesses like they did in England, but their families used to chase them across country to stop them holding hands over the anvil, a binding vow in those days.” They began to walk, pressing in close to each other as the wind tore away the warmth. “People to this day still marry over the anvil here.”

John let his head roll to the side, bending closer to her ear. “Don’t get any ideas,” he whispered.

“Too late,” she sang back. “I’ve already told you your my backup plan. Deal with it.”

John’s laugh drew the attention of a few passers-by. Penny rolled her eyes and tugged him further along the road. “Oh look, a museum. Let’s take a look.”

It was quiet and warm inside, and John patiently let Penny lead him from display to display as she sighed over the old dresses and read aloud the old telegraph messages.

“I wonder what it was like,” she asked as they drifted into the next room of the museum. “To decide to break with tradition and follow your heart?”

John could only approach the idea from the abstract, no matter how many times he turned it over in his mind. “It must have been a strong compulsion,” he said at last. “You’ve been reading the letters. There was no going back for most of them, once they crossed the border.”

The next room was empty of other visitors, their footsteps loud on the bare wooden floor. Penny’s fingers were light on his arm as she drifted away to look more closely at the next display, her eyes drifting lightly over the words. “It didn’t always end well,” she noted.

John moved to stand beside her, looking over papers that recorded the disintegration of a family, one telegraph at a time. He couldn’t imagine saying anything as cruel to his brothers, no matter what they had done.

He couldn’t imagine not forgiving them for their mistakes, even mistakes as big as these, recorded centuries before.

Next to him, Penny sighed as she leaned back into him. “I hope I never regret falling in love.”

John had nothing to say to that.

* * *

John wasn’t surprised when Penny turned off the road to Glasgow. He’d been seeing the signs for the city all day, and every time he felt his stomach clench briefly at the thought.

This car had become a small world for them over the past few days. He knew that when it ended, it would feel like stepping from one world to another.

And it would be even worse for Penny. “Where will you be going?” he asked, the words bubbling up out of him before he could squeeze them back down. “After Glasgow.”

It was only because he was watching for it did he see Penny’s fingers tighten briefly around the steering wheel. “They haven’t briefed me yet.” John watched her forcibly relax her grip. “Hopefully they’ll allow me time to pack the proper outfits,” she quipped weakly.

John breathed deep, letting the inhalation stiffen his spine, pull back his shoulders. “Wherever it is, I’m sure you’ll do great.”

Penny’s face was a mask. “First mission,” she whispered. Her next breath was shaky and slow.

John studied her profile. “Pull over,” he ordered.

Gravel rattled as it was kicked up under the tyres as Penny swerved off the tarmac onto the soft shoulder. They came to a stop under an overpass, the deep shadows fringed with ragged greenery and rain-soaked trees.

John unbuckled his belt and reached across to gently peel Penny’s hands off the steering wheel. The movement snapped her back, and she flung open her door and almost tumbled out onto the verge.

John came around the car at a run, but Penny was already back on her feet, hands on her hips as she walked a few steps deeper into the shadow. “Penny?”

“Sorry,” she apologized, bending at the waist for a moment before straightening up once more. “I don’t know what came over me.”

John gave her a look, reaching out to take her by the shoulders. Automatically, he assessed the pallor of her skin, the dilation of her eyes. She shook him off.

“I guess it just hit me that I’m no longer in training. It’s really real.” She rubbed the orbit of her eyes with her thumbs. “They’re trusting me with actual missions. My choices will have consequences.” Her hands dropped to her sides, and John watched her warily. “I envy you your confidence, darling. That you will do good.” She finally opened her eyes and gave him a wry smile. “I wish I could say the same.”

John reached out, loosely encircling her wrists with his fingers. “Hey, what did I say? I trust you. And I know you’re going make a difference. For the good,” he added as she rolled her eyes. John released one wrist to gently brush away a loose strand of hair off her cheek. “I have faith in you, Penny.”

She shook her head, but her smile was real, the colour returning to her cheeks. “And I, you,” she said softly. “So I guess I’ll have to trust you on this.” John tried to keep a straight face as he nodded, and she rolled her eyes again and gently pushed his shoulder. “Bastard. Stop cutting through my existential Gordian knots.”

“I like efficient solutions,” he shot back, taking her by the arm and leading her over to sit on a battered old safety railing that ran parallel to the road. “But you will be okay? I mean, after?”

Penny nodded. “Once I get started, I’ll be fine. First is the worst, as they always say.”

John settled on the rail beside her and pretended not to notice how tightly she was holding onto his hand now. “Remind me of that the day Five goes live, will you?”

“Oh,” she said brightly. “You’ve got a designation? I hadn’t heard that.”

John nodded briskly, looking over their car, the mud splashes up the rear wheels, the bug splatters on the wind screen. “Yeah, I’m going to be Thunderbird Five.” It was the first time he had told anyone, he realized, and had to say it again. “I’m Thunderbird Five, of International Rescue. Oh man,” he added, bending forward to rest his forehead on his knees. “That feels weird to say.”

Penny patted his back solicitously. “It sounds wonderful, darling. And I know you’re going make a difference.” John sat up just as Penny winked cheekily at him “I have faith in you.”

His laugh of surprise sounded loud under the bridge. “Just for that,” he said, standing and pulling her up with him. “I’m driving.”

* * *

Seeing the city limits sign for Glasgow felt like accepting her fate.

Penny thought she’d be excited, or nervous, or scared. And she was, but all those emotions had settled under a blanket of calm readiness.

Beside her, John was humming tunelessly. “Where are we meeting the new owner of this beast?” he asked as they passed another sign for the city centre.

“George Square.” Penny fidgeted with the comm in her lap as she craned her neck to the read the sign. “Over the bridge, I think.”

Penny navigated John to a stop next to a bronze statue. They both sat forward to look up through the windscreen at the figure. “Is it odd he reminds me of dad?” John asked, never taking his eyes off it.

“Something about the set of the chin, I think,” Penny concurred. “Oh well, time to go.”

It didn’t take them long to gather their bags, clean out the worst of the rubbish that had accrued through their trip - the ticket stubs from the rollercoaster, a half-wilted flower, an interesting pebble.

“I think we tracked half the beach in here,” John said as he hauled their bags out of the rear compartment.

Penny waved her hand, her eyes on her comm as she flipped through her messages. “Not our problem now. He says he’s almost…oh, there he is.” Snapping her comm shut, Penny stood up from where she had been perched on Ginny’s bonnet.

John recognized the shift, from Penny to Lady Penelope.

He hung back, watching as Penelope handed over the keys to a stern man with a ridiculous mustache. As she turned back to him he shouldered their bags and held out his arm for her to take.

They were halfway across the square when they heard the familiar purr of the engine.

Penny’s grip tightened, but neither of them looked back. “Where to now, Miss Penny?” John asked as the noise of the engine faded away.

Penny rested her head on his shoulder, just for a second. “I’ve organized a train ticket for you back to London. Apparently your father is flying in tonight, you should be able to catch up with him at the hotel.”

John swallowed around the lump in his throat. “And you.”

Penny winked. “I’ve a different destination.”

John steered them out of the flow of people, towards a quiet bench. “Will I get to see you before launch?”

Penny smiled weakly and shook her head. “Unfortunately, probably not.”

John took a deep breath and gathered her in tight. “Only a call away,” he whispered in her ear. “Miss Secret Agent.”

“Likewise,” she whispered back like a promise. “ _Thunderbird Five._ ”


	13. Epilogue: I’m ready, so call off your ghost

John was six moves away from Eos taking his King when the comms chimed. “Lady Penelope,” Eos announced, vanishing away the game and replacing it with the call logo.

John tapped the icon. "Thunderbird Five.“

"John, darling,” Penny’s voice preceded her as her face resolved in the holograph. She was in a loose hoodie, one that John remembered owning long again, and that combined with her hair curlers and her easy smile told John this was a social call.

“Hey Pen-Pen. How’s England?”

Penny shifted in frame. "Cold. Dull. Dreary. And no-one has done anything spectacularly nefarious in weeks.“

John laughed. "Poor you.” He stood, putting his flat hand under the hologram. The resolution was worse on the new mobile projectors as compared to the main receiver, or his central dome, but it was good to be able to walk and talk. "I see you’re being sociable on a Friday night?“

"Being this fabulous is a full time job. Bugger,” she added as her hair toss knocked loose one of her curlers.

John slipped into his private quarters, a small area cordoned off from the rest of the Thunderbird, more spacious than the crew quarters on the World Wide Station, but not by much. “So you got bored and called me?”

Pen reached briefly out of frame, came back into view with a blanket and a bowl of popcorn, and smiled winningly. "I was wondering if I could lure you into a bad movie night?“

Ten minutes later, Eos’ ring of lights flashing curious green by his shoulder, John was tucked up in his bunk with grandma's blanket over his knees, a mug of cocoa still hot from the kitchen unit in his hands, a bowl of popcorn at their side. "Ready.”

Penny’s smile was translucent but still luminous. "Here we go.“  
  



End file.
